Star Points for October 2008 by Curtis Roelle Shenzhou 7 In September this year China launched its third manned space mission, Shenzhou 7, with three taikonauts on board. Taikonaut is the Chinese word for astronaut. Taikonaut Zhai Zhigang completed China's first ever space walk. The first manned Shenzhou, launched in 2003, carried one taikonaut. The second, in 2005, carried two. Comparing a few aspects of the evolving U.S. manned space program in the 1960's with China's emerging manned space program reveals some interesting points. In three flights over five years, China has achieved triple occupancy in space vehicles and its first spacewalk. The U.S. achieved its first spacewalk in just four years, but it took eight manned missions to accomplish it. It also took the U.S. seven years to get from the single-seat Mercury capsule to the three-man Apollo missions. According to the Xinhua News Agency, the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft lifted off atop a Chinese Long March II-F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, located in northwestern China's Gansu Province, on September 25. Two days later, Zhai Zhigang made his historic space walk, spending around 20 minutes outside his space vehicle. This is comparable to Russia's and America's first spacewalks in 1965. Alexey Leonov spent 20 minutes outside Voskhod 2, and Ed White walked in space for 21 minutes outside Gemini 4. Shenzhou 7 landed in China's northern grassland at Siziwang Banner in central Inner Mongolia on September 28, the day following the space walk. So China appears to be making good progress in a methodical way, as it moves forward with its manned space program. There are, of course, more "firsts" in space that China has yet to accomplish, one of which is to launch a female taikonaut on a space mission. In 2004 China Daily's web site reported that a group of female taikonauts had been selected and were to begin training, but to date no female has been launched on a Chinese space mission. Russia launched Valentina Tereshkova only two years after the first man in space, while it took the U.S. 22 years to launch Sally Ride on the Space Shuttle. The Chinese character for shen means divine, gods, or saintly and the character zhou means vessel, craft, or land. The most common translations for the name Shenzhou are Divine Craft or Saintly Vessel . The name Shenzhou is also a play on an alternative name for China that means Divine Land or Land of the Gods. The term taikonaut was coined from the Chinese word tai kong, meaning space or cosmos. Shenzhou 7 ended the first phase of manned Chinese space flight. The second phase begins with Shenzhou 8. Future Shenzhou missions are expected to include a manned permanent space station and an eventual lunar landing. The Shenzhou 8 mission will launch a small, unmanned orbiting laboratory planned for 2011. Shenzhou 9 will place an unmanned spacecraft in orbit that will dock via remote control to the orbiting Shenzhou 8 laboratory. Shenzhou 10, the fourth manned mission, will dock with the space laboratory. The Shenzhou 10 taikonauts will return to earth in the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft. Beyond that China plans to loft a large earth orbiting manned laboratory by the year 2020. Beyond that, China has its eye on the moon, and is considering a manned landing with no firm target date. India, for its part, has announced plans to land humans on the moon by 2020, but has yet to conduct a manned space flight. The United States' Constellation program is also targeting a 2020 return to the moon and, beyond that, a manned mission to the planet Mars.